nature of our own government, has been reserved that benevolence, which, in sequestrating the criminal, keeps before his eyes the bright image of returning virtue, and baptizes his place of punishment with the hope of heaven. If to appease the anger of an offended community, Justice must purge, as it were, with fire, the soul that hath sinned, Mercy forgets not to sit by as a refiner, pronouncing when the dross is fully separated, and, in the sacred words of inspiration, "counting the Law as a schoolmaster, that bringeth unto Christ." How would Howard have rejoiced had such a prospect dawned upon him, while hazarding his life, to "dive into the depth of dungeons, to plunge amid the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gage of misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries."
The pens of some of our distinguished writers have enforced the feasibility of making prisons adjuncts in the reformation of vice, and in several of our States buildings have been erected on this principle, and theories in some measure reduced to practice. Among these institutions, that at Wethersfield, Connecticut, stands conspicuous, in the opinion of foreigners as well as of natives, for the adaptation of its structure, the wisdom of its policy, and the results of its discipline.
It was at the close of a long, cloudless summer's